If it’s reductive to say they were all morons, it’s fabulist to say they could step into the modern era and be nerds.
I get your point that curious people had no other outlet then, and that the clergy was just where they went. But there is one problem with that: science did in fact develop as a discipline. We did crawl out of the dark ages. We did discover we are not the center of the universe. And mostly it wasn’t the clergy who did that. There are notable exceptions like Gregor Mendel and Pope Gregory 13. But not enough to characterize the whole institution by. And in fact that same institution was a force for anti-curiosity quite a bit, as when they imprisoned Galileo, which is hardly the only example of them quashing open questioning as heresy.
If perhaps we focused only on theologians who were not part of the clergy, that could turn up slightly differently. I don’t know enough there to guess.
I’m ateist just to be clear, but it’s undeniable that the path that lead to science stems from academia and univirsities rules and funded by clergy.
Leibniz was a fervent (or rather, average for the time) believer and bended backward to include God in each and any of his hypothesis about the world (so much so that in front of the logical necessities of motion he posited that God planned it all in advance, incuding some funny stuff about each of us being already alive in the ballsacks of our ancestors, to go around the fact that I wouldn’t be “godlike” to just spawn new souls every couple of seconds). He invented calculus and mechanical calculators and the likes.
Newton was basically an astrologer.
Bruno hypotized the existence of multiple worlds in space and, to him, that was cool because it meant the domain of God was even wider than previously thought. The Church of the Earth did not like that idea.
On the other hand, Saint Thomas and Saint Agustine both brought back the (relatively) modern approaches of Aristotles and Plato respectively, with a focus on reason as a driving force.
I could agree to disagree but I assume we’d both hate that.
Edit: I guess you stressed the point of “clergy” rather than “fervent believer”. I guess? I don’t find it that relevant since the members of the clergy, monks mostly, were doing their own thing and there was no centralyzed clergy research plan. You think something too weird and too popular, and the pope comes for you.
Since literally everyone could be described as a believer in the past that’s not what I meant. We started with the word “theologian” and yes I assume any reasonable definition of that word is going to have high, high overlap with the clergy, with perhaps some exceptions.
Newton was basically an astrologer.
You lost me, friend. I’m not even sure we can agree to disagree at this point. I’m just going to back away slowly…
You can run but you cannot hide: https://wiki.froth.zone/wiki/Isaac_Newton's_occult_studies?lang=en
And no, the people I mentioned moved theology in different directions, they actually did study and engaged with it.
#sorrynotsorry
Edit: changed wikiless instance.
